Supplemental: Easy to be extremely hard!

“There are no innocents here:” It’s been fascinating to watch the discussions of the Ray Rice matter.

We’ve been struck by several standard reactions—and make no mistake, when one pundit says something about such a case, every other pundit is going to say the exact same thing.

We’ll look at some of those points tomorrow. Our advice to all pundits: If you’re not sure what to say, just say what Willie Geist said.

We’ll talk about that discussion tomorrow. Today, we continued to think about something we saw a pundit say about a different topic.

On yesterday’s Morning Joe, New York Times sports columnist William Rhoden was asked about the Rice matter. He was also asked about a separate event—the NCAA’s decision to drop its sanctions against the Penn State football program earlier than had been planned.

EDER (9/9/14): The N.C.A.A. on Monday restored Penn State's postseason eligibility, removing one of the final hurdles in its football team's path back to normalcy in the aftermath of the child sexual abuse scandal that engulfed the university nearly three years ago.

The decision by the N.C.A.A.'s executive committee means that Penn State will be allowed to participate in a bowl game this season, if it qualifies. It also restores all the scholarships that it stripped from the team.

The move marks a reversal from two years ago, when the N.C.A.A. took the unprecedented—and controversial—step of swiftly barring Penn State's football team from postseason play for four seasons, slashing its scholarship count and directing $60 million to be put into a national fund for sexual-abuse survivors.

But on Monday, the N.C.A.A. voted to roll back the punishments on the recommendations of former Senator George J. Mitchell, who was hired to monitor Penn State in the aftermath of the case. Mitchell concluded that Penn State had made progress—and that its football players, uninvolved in the abuse case, ''bear no personal responsibility'' for what transpired in the past.

''In light of Penn State's responsiveness to its obligations and the many improvements it has instituted, I believe these student-athletes should have the opportunity to play in the postseason should they earn it on the field this year,'' Mitchell wrote in a 58-page report.

We’d be inclined to agree with Mitchell’s recommendation. Others might disagree. What saddened us what Rhoden’s reaction when Mika Brzezinski reported the story and spoke in support of Mitchell.

As Brzezinski was reporting the story, Rhoden and Scarborough muttered that Penn State should have received the “death penalty”—should have had its football program ended altogether.

BRZEZINSKI (9/9/14): But Bill, let me just challenge you a little bit on that, although it’s tough. But just to sort of— I actually know some people who went to Penn State and have talked a lot about this. A friend of the show has actually written us a long letter about this.

You know, the players here, and the other people involved, are not people who get paid millions and millions of dollars. They’re students, getting an education. Hold on! And while whoever was involved even remotely in the scandal should be routed out of that place and left to rot somewhere, why should the students of Penn State, who do a lot of good things—

I mean, they have a massive fundraiser there every year. They raise millions of dollars for cancer research. They have incredible programs and they’re trying to education thousands and thousands of young people.

I just wonder why they should suffer.

No one “suffers” when their team can’t play in a bowl game. On the other hand, the current players and coaches had nothing to do with the heinous conduct which occurred at Penn State. Obviously, neither did students, past and present, who are fans of the team.

We’d be inclined to support Mitchell’s recommendation. Someone else might think that enforcing the full set of penalties might encourage staff at other schools to avoid future misconduct.

We don’t favor the punitive approach to life, but that position would at least make sense. What didn’t make sense was Rhoden’s astounding response to Brzezinski:

BRZEZINSKI: I mean, they have a massive fundraiser there every year. They raise millions of dollars for cancer research. They have incredible programs and they’re trying to education thousands and thousands of young people.

I just wonder why they should suffer.

RHODEN: There are no innocents here, unfortunately.

There are no innocents here? Some freshman punter on the team is somehow guilty too? The kids in the freshman dorm?

Rhoden is a sports columnist. Presumably, he doesn’t hate college football, even though bigtime college football is absurdly bloated as currently practiced.

Bigtime college football is a bit of a monster. It’s also a lot of fun for college students. We’ll assume that Rhoden doesn’t want to shut all football down.

We still feel deadened by the loathing, and the love of punishment, lurking in his response. That said, we live in a very punitive world.

People love to see other people “humiliated and ruined.” We humans find it very easy to be extremely hard.

We still feel deadened by what Rhoden said—deadened, and worried for our society. Can we humans reason at all? More and more, we wonder about that when we watch our pundits in action.

So you’ll know, here’s a bit of what transpired as the discussion continued. We’re transcribing Rhoden as best we can:

BRZEZINSKI: I mean, they have a massive fundraiser there every year. They raise millions of dollars for cancer research. They have incredible programs and they’re trying to education thousands and thousands of young people.

I just wonder why they should suffer.

RHODEN: There are no innocents here, unfortunately.

BRZEZINSKI: So they should suffer too?

RHODEN: Everybody— Because everybody had thousands of people coming to support that football team.

Or something. You can watch the ensuing exchange. Eventually, Rhoden said this:

“The president [of Penn State] should have thought about that, they should have all thought about that before they turned their eye. They should have thought about the consequences of not dealing with this.”

As Brzezinski had said, administrators who “turned their eye” can be pursued as individuals. The president in question, Graham Spanier, was booted from that office long ago.

In November 2012, Spanier was “indicted for grand jury perjury, obstruction of justice, child endangerment, failure to report child abuse and conspiracy in connection with the scandal.” He’s still awaiting trial. But according to Rhoden, members of Penn State’s freshman class are no innocents either!

There are no innocents here! Hearing many pundits speak, we get a very strong feeling that they deeply believe that.

5 comments:

No one may suffer when a team can't go to a bowl game, but people certainly do when scholarships are taken away as they were here. It's not like they took the 15 less football scholarships and gave out an additional 15 academic scholarships. Those scholarships just vanished, and 15 less students a year got one.

The punishment of worldwide accounting firm Arthur Andersen in the wake of the Enron scandal illustrates Bob's point. Some people in Andersen's Houston office had been helping Enron to cover up their financial problems. The punishment meted out had the effect of destroying the entire firm. Thousands of employees throughout the world were punished because of the wrong-doing of some small number of employees in Houston.

There is no interest here: Guess Howler readers would rather fill a comment box about a pro player banging on a girlfriend in a casino elevator than a college ignoring a geezer banging boys in their lockeroom shower.